Bellman & Black (27 page)

How vast London was. How great the extent of its housing and commerce and population. There was not a living soul in this city, not so far as the eye could see, that would not at some point have need of the goods and services provided by Bellman & Black. He looked out, turning slowly, in all directions. Birds were swooping and diving in the darkening sky, and beneath them, streets of houses stretched in all directions, grand and modest and impoverished. In one of those houses, in Richmond say, a fellow would be sneezing, right at this very moment. Just as in Mayfair someone was shivering. In Spitalfields, a tainted oyster was slipping down someone’s throat, and in Bloomsbury someone was pouring the glass that would prove one glass too many and . . . Oh, it was endless. They would come all right. Sick today, dead tomorrow, and on Thursday Bellman & Black would open its doors to the bereaved. It was an enterprise that could not fail.

He, William Bellman, had created this great engine. It was his, and tomorrow the staff would be coal to its stoves, water to its wheel, and when the customers came thronging, his machine would start to extract the money from them and disgorge them changed, lighter in the pocket and lighter at heart, as the process took their guineas and replaced them with consolation. He had made it. It was his emporium, Bellman &—

His hands were shaking. He had forgotten something. Never in his life had he been more certain! A feather stir in his abdomen, a turbulence in his chest: he was on the brink of remembering . . .

The rain beat harder against his back. As he felt the damp chill bloom across his shoulders, a scene seeped into his mind: there was a
spot, down there, opposite the building, where he had stood one day a year ago in the rain. He had made architecture out of air and water.

There had been a stone, was that it?

A bird? Shimmering purple and green and blue?

Buried! In the foundations of his emporium!

A rook had flown up from the foundations, risen on rain-heavy wings through the floors of his shop; he had seen it, that day—

The construction beneath his feet seemed suddenly insubstantial as mist. The notion came to him that he was suspended high above ground with only rain and air to hold him up.

London dived and veered around him. Bellman’s hands flew to his head as the city broke like a mirror and the shards flew apart, the roof line sheered off, the roof itself plummeted and him with it, in a breathtaking plunge. Afraid of the building’s edge, afraid of the glass grid, Bellman fell helplessly to his knees. Desperate for a fingerhold his fingers slithered over the wet flat lead as the building tilted violently. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it was no help: a great fall was coming. There was no up and no down, only falling, and he vomited as he fell, and the world spun and tipped wildly around him. He fell and he fell—there was no end to the falling.

·  ·  ·

The sky was black.

It was still raining.

Bellman could hear whimpering, and understood it was himself.

There was a bird, an ancient black bird buried in the foundations of his emporium.

His fingers ached from holding on, and he wept.

At some point in the night, Bellman discovered that this would not do. He was ill. He would have to resign. He must go to the haberdashers and tell them that a new manager must be found.

Tentatively he moved a hand. A foot. He crawled along the roof to the hatch. Descending the wooden steps, trembling and weeping, he
was overcome by waves of heat and chill. He thought longingly of the beds in the seamstresses’ rooms, but no, first he had to hand in his resignation. Planes of blackness assailed him on the stairs and brought on the vertigo again. More than once he slumped and collapsed, clinging to the banisters before persuading himself back onto his feet and forward. Getting to the ground was as arduous as coming down a mountain, and when he unlocked the door to step out into Regent Street no one would have recognized him as the man who had gone in.

A
few souls were about in Regent Street, even this dead hour of the night. They were on their way to work early, or on their way home after a long night, or else one of those who have no work and no home and for whom all hours of the day and night are equally comfortless. Passers-by took Bellman for one of the latter. Hatless, soaked to the skin, smelling sour, he walked as though he didn’t trust the pavement beneath his feet, and once in a while he stopped to lean against a wall and close his eyes. People sped up to pass him, took wide detours, avoided looking him in the eye.

For an hour Bellman walked unsteadily in a city he did not know. He was aware that strangers were casting sideways looks at him as they passed, knew that with his erratic breathing and his drenched clothes he must look eccentric, alarming even, yet such was his altered state that he felt no embarrassment. No! For he was a man at a great turning point! He was the man who had everything! Everything and more! And he was going to throw it away!

Why this compulsion to escape from everything he had worked so hard to achieve? He could not precisely say. But he was resolved to do it, and he would do it, and the reason was powerful enough, even if it wasn’t particularly clear.

At the turn of a corner he saw, alighting from a cab, a familiar figure. Black.

Bellman halted.

He was not in the least surprised. It was in the nature of the man to appear at strange moments. At ordinary times he kept his distance and then, when crisis struck, there was Black. Peculiar, but then that was Black for you.

Why not tell him now? It was as good a time as any. At the thought of unburdening himself of the emporium and all it entailed, he felt a profound relief.

Black turned into the side street and Bellman headed after him. He had to follow at a great pace for Black seemed able to walk at an unnaturally fast speed. More than once he thought he had lost him in a maze of alleys and passages, but each time he caught sight of him again: a tailcoat disappearing round a corner, the jaunty tilt of his hat half concealed in the shadows.

For all his great efforts Bellman never seemed to gain ground on Black; the man always stayed out of reach. After ten minutes of this chase, Bellman began to doubt himself. Was it really Black he had seen? Surely he should have caught up with him by now?

Staring down an empty street, Bellman took out his handkerchief to wipe his brow. He was shivering. He realized that he didn’t know where he was. The streets were narrow and rough-looking and it was darker now. There were dark doors to the dwellings on each side of him, some half open, and it was not difficult to imagine what kind of ruffians might be hiding behind them. He was suddenly aware of how he would appear to any ne’er-do-well loitering in the dark. A middle-aged man, out of breath and trembling in a part of town he was clearly unfamiliar with. He had heard the stories: men like him, either lost or lured into dark side streets, emerging later with a bump on the head the size of an egg and missing their pocket watch, their purse, their shoes. Or worse. And Black? He was nowhere to be seen.

Resigned to the worst, Bellman heaved a sigh and forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, slowly making his way to the next
turning. And there, to his amazement, he saw Black. How could he mistake a profile like that! He was in conversation with someone, a girl or a young woman.

“Black!”

The man appeared not to hear him.

“Black! Hoy!”

But then the next moment Black was gone—he must have nipped into that door just behind him, Bellman thought—and the woman was making her way along the street in his direction.

She has tried it on with him and now it will be my turn! he thought, and he prepared himself to put her off. But as they drew nearer she did not speak, nor even glance at him, until they were close enough to have to step sideways to avoid each other in the narrowness of the passage. Then her eyes briefly met his and a startled look crossed her face.

It was the seamstress. Girl No. 9.

Bellman made an effort to win control of himself, to straighten the desperation that had fixed itself upon his face.

“Black!” he heard himself say, “I know that man!” but his voice came to his ears as though from far away and after some delay. He felt himself sway.

The young woman peered at him. “Mr. Bellman?”

He did not know how to answer. How to explain this feeling that something inside him had come undone, that some small but essential element was adrift in him where it had once been connected, and until he could locate it he would never be himself again?

He tried to speak, then, unable to help himself, he had to put his hand heavily on her shoulder to keep from falling.

He was aware of contact—despite his leather glove, despite her serge jacket—contact and a transfer of weight from himself to her. For a moment she supported him, and they knew a precarious moment
of balance; then there came a sinking, a giving way, and with something inevitable about it the flagstones beneath his feet, the shoulder on which he leaned, his own bones, seemed to dissolve, and he knew nothing but black.

When he came to himself he was in a low-ceilinged room, sitting in the only chair. There was no fire in the grate, no logs either. A cup of liquid appeared before him, and he drank it: honey water.

“That man. Black . . .” he began.

“I don’t know who you mean. Who is it you’re looking for?”

“Black.” He frowned. How to explain. His business partner? A stranger? A friend?

“Black? Of Bellman & Black?” She looked nervously at him, puzzled. “And you think he is here?”

“I saw him. He spoke to you.”

She embarked on a shake of the head, repressed it, reluctant to contradict her employer.

“There,” he insisted, “just now, in the street . . .”

The point of a white tooth caught her lip and her eyes rose uncertainly to his.

A fit of trembling overtook Bellman.

“Your coat is wet,” she murmured. “You are cold. I can walk with you to the main road, there will be a hackney carriage—”

He nodded, rose, the room swum around him and he sank back to his chair.

“There is nothing for it then,” she said to herself. “You must sleep here.”

She peeled his rain-sodden coat off his arms and opened a door in the wall. A bed was concealed, cupboard-style, behind it. He sank, his face was for a moment against her breast, then on a pillow, then he was asleep.

An hour later he was awake. There was the beginning of light in the room. He sat up. The bed was firm beneath him. He put his feet on
the floor and the floor felt solid. He took a few steps. No wall reared or tipped or sheered away.

Girl No. 9 was sleeping in the chair. He tiptoed past, returned to put some coins on the table, and she didn’t stir. Her skin had traces of salt on it: tear trails, and her brown curls were damp where she had been weeping.

To get out Bellman had to edge past an infant’s crib. Empty.

·  ·  ·

In his own bedroom, Bellman peeled off his wet clothes and hung them over the back of a chair. They would take a long time to dry. His slow, dull brain mechanically unearthed a fact and presented it to him.

He had no second black suit.

His face pulled into a grin or grimace. He had meant to get another two black suits made up for himself. That was what he’d forgotten! That was what had been troubling him all day yesterday!

Thank goodness!

The sob that escaped from his lungs might have been laughter.

Bellman had never been more grateful to clamber into bed, and he sank instantly into a deep sleep.

·  ·  ·

Waking for the second time that morning, William leapt out of bed and ordered a bath.

He did not pause to think about his anxiety of the day before, his collapse on the roof, his mad chase after Black through the streets of London, his decision to renounce the shop. He merely recollected that he’d had a bit of a dizzy spell, a touch of fatigue, and now, finding himself so extraordinarily well again, he congratulated himself on his sturdy constitution.

In between the hundred and one other things he meant to do today, he would find time to be measured for a new suit. With thirty-five seamstresses on the premises it would hardly be a problem.

O
n a warm day in summer, pairs of rooks will ride the warm upward current, soaring with leisurely ease to a very great height, where they are—to earthbound humans—mere dots of black in the sky. There, they allow themselves deliberately to slip off the edge of the air wave, and plummet Icarus-like to earth, tumbling and twisting as they go. Then, when your heart is in your mouth and they are a short mortal second from the ground, they extend their wings, gain a featherhold on the rising air, climb aboard the breeze, and rise aloft—whereupon they do it all over again.

There is no purpose to this. They are teasing gravity, showing off, pretending for the sheer hilarity of it to be human.

To judge by the merriment of the sky laughter, there can be little in the world more pleasurable than to be a rook pretending not to know how to fly.